CALIFORNIA SCREAMIN'

Get thee to our dictionary

Michael P. Ackley has worked more than three decades as a journalist, the majority of that time at the Sacramento Union. His experience includes reporting, editing and writing commentary. He retired from teaching journalism for California State University at Hayward.

Editor’s note: Michael Ackley’s columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell which is which.

Developments in the news last week sent us to the Blind Partisan’s Dictionary to increase our understanding of a number of terms.

The first was “bail.” We had been confused about this because Iran said it had accepted $500,000 “bail” for the release of Berkeley hiker Sarah Shourd, then allowed her to leave the country and avoid prosecution. The dictionary was most helpful. It said:

bail – n. 1. a deposit of money or property as a surety that a prisoner temporarily released from custody will appear for judicial proceedings; 2. in certain Islamic republics, a synonym for ransom.

We seriously doubt that Ms. Shourd will return to Iran for trial on spying charges. Hence the following limerick:

Though espionage was abjured

The Berkeley-ite could not be lured
To return to the mullahs
and retrieve her dollahs,
For justice could not be a-Shourd.

Then there was our president’s often-repeated call for higher taxes on the “wealthy.” He defined these as folks making $200,000 a year. So we looked up “wealthy” and found:

wealthy – adj. having accumulated such money and property as to be free of material concerns, as distinct from high income, which denotes an earned living standard that is fragile before the vagaries and exigencies of life.

“Wealthy,” therefore, is a term that should be reserved for folks like the English royal family, Microsoft millionaires or the Kennedys of Massachusetts.

We moved from this to the definition of “moderate,” being somewhat perplexed by the moans from the Left about the demise of moderate Republicanism. The BPD provided the following:

moderate – adj. willing to compromise in order to accommodate the desires of those who are unwilling to compromise.

Finally, there were the continual assertions by candidates of various stripes that their opponents represented the “special interests.” Once more the Blind Partisan’s Dictionary provided clarity:

special interests – n. individual, corporate, political or otherwise-organized entities that support you instead of me.

Pot shots: The Washington Post, like the Los Angeles Times, can produce excellent reporting when it wants to. This was the case in the newspaper’s piece on Mexican officials’ reaction to California’s ballot Proposition 19, which would legalize marijuana. The gist of it: “Why should we go to war to stop the marijuana trade when California (and other states) may legalize the weed?”

With this in mind, it was heartening to learn that San Diego County supervisors, who can see Mexico from their homes, voted unanimously to oppose Prop. 19. Naturally, we wish to give credit where credit is due, but we also must pass along the discouraging word that you can get high rather economically at San Diego’s medical marijuana dispensaries.

The Post report notes you can easily get a prescription for pot to treat anything from acne to zymosis.

All you need do, the Post says, is visit “one San Diego area doctor’s office … undergo a four-minute consultation with a physician, and purchase a medical marijuana certificate with a ’420′ identification card granting … access to the state’s dispensaries.” Kick in $59 for a doctor’s prescription, and you can purchase some of the Golden State’s genetically supercharged cannabis for $10 a joint.

And don’t worry about federal prosecution. The Obama administration announced last year it would prosecute only phony pot dispensaries (as if there were another kind).

Final salvo: Last week’s primary elections sent the ruling class into a spin, none moreso than the Post reporter who wrote, “In Wisconsin, businessman Ron Johnson won the GOP Senate primary and the right to challenge Sen. Russell Feingold (D) in what is expected to be an unexpectedly close race.”